Suchergebnisse

Today few people deny the existence of regional substate diplomacy (Criekemans 2010). But there is still no common agreement on a region's right to do so and, above all, on their scope of action. This question goes against what used to be the dominant approach in international relations, the state-centric approach that leads to the logic of speaking with one voice. Increasingly, a multilevel-governance approach has contested this state-centric view and proposes an alternative logic of multiple actors speaking with their voice, nuancing strongly the seminal distinction between "sovereignty-bound" and "sovereignty-free" actors (Rosenau 1990). From the 1970s, the world has seen the growing presence of sovereignty-free actors in international relations. Among these actors, non-central or, better, substate, governments of federal states have developed intensive foreign relations. These governments are using a range of techniques: from shaping the federal government's foreign policy to establishing themselves directly in the international arena (Blatter et al. 2008). For minority nation governments this is particularly a challenge, as they have to act internally – where they have developed full-fledged legislative powers within a multinational federation – and externally – where international and national laws are often still reluctant to recognise their right of action (Lejeune 2003). Yet some minority nations have thrived in developing their own international relations. Bavaria, Catalonia, Flanders, Quebec, Scotland and Wallonia are often seen as successful international players even if they are not fully sovereignty bound (Michelmann 2009; Criekemans 2010). The international actions of these minority nations have been characterised under the umbrella of "identity paradiplomacy" (Paquin 2003); that is, a willingness to use international relations to foster a nation-building process within a multinational state. This observation was particularly prevalent for minority nations strongly in competition with a federal government about their nationbuilding process, albeit for different reasons, namely Flanders, Quebec and Scotland (Paquin 2004). The case of Wallonia seems to fits less well into the identity paradiplomacy framework, which therefore raises the question of alternative roads to international relations. This is the core question of this chapter: is identity paradiplomacy the only way to go for minority nations? Quebec and Wallonia are both well known for their active foreign relations.

Some states are widely recognized by policy makers and scholars as middle powers. The characteristics that were highlighted for these countries have become the basic guidelines for understanding middle powermanship and developing the corresponding theory. While those analyses offer rich in-depth insights into the foreign policy of specific countries, they have so far lacked a further step of generalization. When establishing such power-based rankings, we assume the possibility to determine states' capacities so as to identify their position in said ranking. As appealing as this theoretical model may be, the reality of international politics increasingly challenge it. Thus, we argue that this theoretical inadequacy is due to the fact that middle power theory as it has been developed so far should be understood as an inductive, not a deductive, approach . Consequently, the contemporary reality calls for yet another stage of development in this theory. The choice of Pakistan as our case study arises from the observation that while Pakistan can hardly fit into the current classification(s) of middle powermanship due to its poor economic and development performances, it is a nuclear state and is –at least– in the top twenty armies of the world. Moreover, we find several cases in which Pakistan has used the diplomatic tools characterizing middle powers, such as mediation or niche diplomacy. Our paper aims at answering two questions: (1) can middle power theory bring some light on Pakistan's positioning in world politics? (2) Alternatively, what does the case of Pakistan tell us about the (ir)relevance of middle power theory? We build upon role theory to develop the case of middle powermanship as a status-role bundle, by analyzing three specific cases of Pakistan's foreign policy: Pakistani nuclear posturing, its Afghan policy and its posturing vis-à-vis the Saudi-Iranian regional competition.